Marker

I often envy the reckless and passionate who dash themselves against the future without a backward glance. These people always seem to live and love whole-heartedly. Even their blogs, if they bother, are furious staccato entries demanding urgent reading as each frantic day unfolds.

Unlike them, I do everything in full knowledge of consequence and past experience, as if moving through a dilation in time. Memories inhabit and define me: the escapist's trap. This diary is exactly 2 years old.

Amazingly, I have so few regrets. Everything this past year has served a lesson, from the grand excitement of tigers and eagles and diving, to the simple power of rainy days, disappointment, holding hands.

Yesterday night I went blading with my friend. We tried for the first time the Buona Vista connector beside the large canal. World Cup season - the path was deserted, smooth and straight. Thanks to her, I have become very confident in my skates.

It was 11 pm. Flats and condos skirted by, reflecting hundreds of light-box lives glued to their screens. We glided under highways and train-tracks and bridges, until the end of the line opened abruptly onto a vista of Jurong factories across the water.

I have learnt to seek poignancy in the smallest of things, like a shakey night picture of industrial buildings that mean nothing to anyone. And here at my feet, painted upon the dark path: "START: 0 KM".